Spectres of Afrikanerdom in contemporary commodity culture: history, memory, and imagining the self

Abstract

The centrality of nostalgia in contemporary Afrikaner culture is contingent on the gradual demotion of Afrikaner history in post-apartheid South Africa. This article, however, departs from the view that such recapitulations of the past are necessarily always intransigent. Casting Afrikaner nostalgia as manifesting dissatisfaction with the government is ultimately not representative of the diverse spectres of Afrikanerdom that haunt selected commodity items, such as the t-shirts discussed in this article. If we allow for a melange of narratives and interpretations to emerge, as a postmodern view of history would encourage, it enables us to challenge a one-dimensional view of Afrikaner nostalgia. This article therefore posits that specific nostalgic imaginings of Afrikanerdom are decidedly self-reflexive and progressive. Instead of attempting to reify the past (together with irrecoverable positions of power), some of the discourses addressed in this article reveal Afrikanerdom’s capacities for appropriation, aestheticisation and commodification, which open up new possibilities for thinking about Afrikaner subjectivity in post-apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

• Afrikaners
• commodification
• memory
• nostalgia
• postmodernism
• retro

Notes

1. See, Baudrillard 1988, [1970] 1998; Jameson 1991; Nora [1984] 2012; Verwoert [2007] 2012.

2. See, De Vries (2012), Korf and Malan (2002), Kotze et al. (2015), Lewis (2008), Steyn (2001, 2004), Verwey and Quayle (2012) and Vestergaard 2001.

3. During the late nineteenth century, Rhodes (a prominent British colonist, politician and entrepreneur) was at the forefront of expanding British rule “over the prime areas [of Southern Africa] not yet under white control” (Giliomee 2009, 241). In “what is now Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa, [Rhodes] looted the region’s wealth [and displaced numerous indigenous peoples] in his attempts … to spread the ‘superior’ Anglo-Saxon culture” (Editorial: Razing Symbols isn't Real Change 2015). On 9 April 2015, Rhodes’s statue was removed following a number of rallies mobilised by the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement, whose members (including university staff and students) view the “fall of ‘Rhodes’ [as] symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege” at UCT (Rhodes Must Fall 2015).

4. See, Blaser 2012, 16; Giliomee 2009, 662; Truscott 2011; Van der Waal and Robins 2011; Wasserman 2009, 63.

5. See, Baines 2013; M. Blaser and Van der Westhuizen 2012; Grundlingh 2004; Haupt 2012; Kotze et al. 2015; Van der Waal and Robins 2011; Worby and Ally 2013.

6. During the heyday of the De la Rey phenomenon, live performances and recordings of the song were met by audiences “known to clutch balled fists to their chests and sing the rousing chorus with great gusto [suggesting] that the song is able to touch a raw nerve in the Afrikaner psyche while also prompting a momentary uplift of the spirit,” and a sense of ethnic “togetherness” (Baines 2013, 225).

7. Of course, selected representations of “new” Afrikanerness are problematic, since they seize upon multiculturalism in an uncritical manner, and often self-defensively incorporate blackness into an Afrikaner vernacular in order to assuage the “taint” of whiteness. See Sonnekus (2014) for a more comprehensive critique of such acts of tokenism, which appear rather prominently in post-1994 Afrikaans advertising discourses.

8. Owing to the fact that I am predominantly interested in speculating on the possible affective, social and psychological positions that the t-shirts afford their wearers, I am not intent on providing a textual reading of the Valhalla Tees website as a whole. Moreover, I am not suggesting that all the commodity-images featured on the website necessarily operate via reflective nostalgia, although the majority of discourses they engender are inflected by a playful, ironic attitude. Given a broader scope, some of the website’s features could, however, additionally motivate that particular contemporary forms of asserting Afrikanerness are distinctly post-national and integrative: the website’s use of jonkheer (young man) and jonkvrouw (young woman) to designate gender-specific items of clothing are peculiar, since they hark back to the Afrikaners’ Dutch heritage, a fact that was often abandoned in nationalist discourses seeking to establish the Afrikaners as an autonomous, homogenous and legitimately South African ethnic group (Giliomee 2009).Conversely, the website’s emphasis on the European origins of the Afrikaners could be construed as exemplary of the manner in which the past is often sanitised by conveniently circumventing stigmatised narratives, such as apartheid. Yet, one cannot neglect that Valhalla Tees endeavours to remain commercially viable, and therefore evidently deals with historical subjects that can be transformed into aesthetically appealing, humorous accoutrements (without, as I argue, necessarily backsliding into essentialist, reified representations of Afrikanerness).

9. T-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as Praat Afrikaans of hou jou bek (Speak Afrikaans or shut up) and 100% Boeremeisie (100% Afrikaner girl) are also antithetical to the commodities discussed in this article. According to the founder of Valhalla Tees, Pieter Venter, his designs are purposely detached from such inferentially racist, hostile and essentialist discourses (Du Plooy 2013). I similarly anticipate a more discerning, liberal, hip consumer who derides the more gaudy variety of “Afrikaner”-commodities, which are often considered poorly designed and cheaply made, as well as self-defensive and regressive in tone (thus perpetuating the discourse of victimhood popular amongst the right-wing) (Baines 2013).

10. The township, Mamelodi, (in the east of South Africa’s capital, Pretoria) is also named after Kruger (Joubert 2012).

11. Although black youth ostensibly do not fit Valhalla Tees’ target market, one could argue that Zulu-speakers in particular may draw some symbolic power from comprehending the Pretorius t-shirt’s ironic stance, which may remain obscure to those not socialised into similar discursive or linguistic communities (Hutcheon 1995).